Making sense (and, sometimes, nonsense) out of Current News, Issues, Politics

Friday, May 6, 2016

America's Cities In Decline

On Monday, May 1st, Atlantic City avoided a default on its debt payment by the hair of its
mayor's chinny, chin, chin. They may not be so lucky the next time around.

With a third of its casinos now shuttered, the city is struggling to survive, as shown by this graphic from the Wall Street Journal:

With per-person debt at double that of Detroit and Chicago, Atlantic City looks as if it will soon be joining Detroit in bankruptcy. Raising taxes isn't going to do the trick unless you tax everyone an average of 26% against their $26,936 incomes.

Then, there was a story from CNBC that said that 34% of the San Francisco Bay residents surveyed wanted to leave that area due to the cost of living, traffic, poverty, crime, and homelessness.

Add to that the story in Bloomberg News which showed that 20 cities in 2014 -- one-fifth of the top 100 cities -- saw their populations decline.

The point about all this is that declines in populations lead to struggling economies for all too many American cities because the people who do manage to move away are those who can afford to do so. The ones left behind are generally the poorer and can't afford to move. As a result, city revenues fall, debt increases; and bankruptcy isn't far behind.

The bottom line is that we have too many population centers in this country that are dying due to high taxes, crime, no jobs, low pay, decaying infrastructure, traffic, record poverty, and homelessness. The lackluster economic growth of the last 7-1/2 years of the Obama administration have done nothing to correct this urban decay.